Jared,

In all honesty, I would not worry about it EVEN if I wrote about politics for a living. The bottom line is, all journalists -- no matter what they may be registered as -- have their own individual ideas/values when it comes to politics and issues. You can't eliminate that, and you should not try. However, all reporters -- and especially political reporters -- should hold themselves to very high standards, and must be held to very high standards by their superiors. Their work should constantly be evaluated to make sure both sides of every story they write is represented completely and fairly, and to make sure as little bias as is humanly possible seeps through. All journalistic processes should be completely transparent -- we should be able to invite 50 readers into our office at any time and show them what we're doing and why we're doing it.

Unfortunately, we don't hold ourselves to such high standards.

WHO AM I?????

0) I was a President of the USA
1) I am the father of American imperialism (taking Puerto Rico and Guam, meddling int he affairs of Cuba and Panama) which lead to US Marines being called both “State Department troops.” and “gangsters for imperialism"
2) Mark Twain called me "clearly insane." and spoke the truth
3) I am a fascist/national socialist/whathaveu who puts the "greater good" of the country before its citizens and has no moral reservation. For example I said:
4) I love regulating markets and state intervention
5) I was the first President to call for national health insurance
6) I passed brilliant legislation such as the Hepburn Act and the Meat Inspection Act
7) I am an Environmentalist

To the friends of the DISGUSTING "well we can protest a war before it starts but once we're in it let's support the good cause" line of though I recommend this article:
Kurt Vonnegut on the Dresden bombings

EPIC FAIL! His kenyan father was an atheist.

BTW there was no measurable bradley affect in the primaries, and in fact there has been no observed bradley affect since the mid-90s.

How can you be "born into a religion" anyways. I always thought that's a pretty ******ed concept.
"Hey my mother was Jewish", ship it (or not).

Yeah but how about them cellphones!!!!!!111&::!

Mets appears to be getting too much Limbaugh in his diet.

i have not listened to rush in 20 years

Not to speak for Mets here, but I don't think he was implying the HE thought Obama was born Muslim. But there is no doubt there is a percentage of Americans who do believe this.

At least I hope that is what Mets is saying. Otherwise, I agree with WN.

im not denying this fact, but im not saying people will believe it. This article is one of many that support the fact that he is not a muslim, but there are so many of these type articles/emails because many people believe he is ... and i think that there will be a bradley effect.

When he said "John McCain has not talked about my Muslim Faith", of course it is taken out of context, and anyone who watched the whole interview understood what he is talking about. But this clip was seen, not in context, by many undecided people who were too lazy too further research it and believe it proves he is a muslim. Here is the video in context if you are interested.

Then there is the Kenya connection, where politicians there claimed to be Obama's relatives to help their campain. Again, there is absolutely no evidence that these people are related to Obama, none, but most people believe what they here and read. And this too might have a bradley effect on the voters

Emails that twisted words he wrote in his book spread as well. Many people will believe what they read

All I was saying is that for some undecideds, who don't do a ton of research, all of this Obama smear may stear them to McCain regardless of who they publicly say they support now.

Exactly Aries.

I think it would be helpful if when what you mean to say is "I know this isn't true but lots of people believe it anyway" you would actually express it that way, instead of just repeating the false proposition. For one thing, it just avoids the need to explain, but it also doesn't potentially help spread false information.

Not spreading false information may not be all that important really, but the vein of xenophobia that underlies these "Obama is a muslim" rumors doesn't really need any encouragement.

In any case, yes I agree there are people who won't vote for Obama because they think he's muslim, or because he's black, or whatever. It's important to note however that this is not the Bradley effect. The Bradley effect is a measure of people who make false reports to pollsters because they wish to hide the fact that they wouldn't vote for a candidate for racial reasons. It causes pollsters to over-report the level of support for the candidate. While polling in the primaries certainly did exhibit a percentage of people who said they would not vote for Obama for racial reasons, it did not exhibit a Bradley effect where people said they would and then didn't.

good article. War is tough.

"There can be no doubt that the allies fought on the side of right and the Germans and Japanese on the side of wrong. World war two was fought for near-holy motives. But I stand convinced that the brand of justice in which we dealt, wholesale bombings of civilian populations, was blasphemous. That the enemy did it first has nothing to do with the moral problem. What I saw of our air war, as the European conflict neared an end, had the earmarks of being an irrational war for war’s sake. Soft citizens of the American democracy had learnt to kick a man below the belt and make the bastard scream.
The occupying Russians, when they discovered that we were Americans, embraced us and congratulated us on the complete desolation our planes had wrought. We accepted their congratulations with good grace and proper modesty, but I felt then as I feel now, that I would have given my life to save Dresden for the world’s generations to come. That is how everyone should feel about every city on earth. "

I'm sure he meant this; and I'm sure he's right.

People can argue that it sucks that this city was destroyed, but it had to be for the greater good. That it sent a message, etc etc etc.

Im not going to argue this; point is, if a US soldier was told to bomb the city, then he should refuse? Should people at home and the media have said, "We are killing innocent people now, we need to come home and stop fighting the war?" I could be wrong, but i dont think there was much protest of us being in WW2 from the media in the US. And i dont think it is a coincidence that WW2 is the last War that the US actually won (well, we won the Gulf War i suppose).

My real point was the media hates Bush, and wants Barrack to win, so they tried to paint this picture of the War, where it looks like we are losing lives and making no progress. Make it look like the iraqui citizens do not want us there. Which simply isn't true. When Barrack visited Iraq, he saw the strides we made, and even admitted that immediate withdrawl would not be good (i cannot find a link for some reason).

So my issue was more with the Media causing people to feel this way than the people themselves.

It's still a tough question though. If your country is in a war, is it treasonous to speak out against it? The Nuremberg trials and the "i was just following orders" defense is a tough one ... cause they were.

So i dont have all the answers, im just shooting the breeze, giving some opinions, making some conversation. In general, i think you should support your country in times of war.

if i misused the word Bradley effect, i apologize, but i mean mostly what you said in the last paragraph, except that I think there will be a difference in polls and results this time. Mainly because the primary was just registered democrats who support mccain, and the election has independents and republicans as well. So the Bradley effect becomes greater.

I can't answer for US military regulations - but in Canada, following an immoral or illegal order is as bad as giving one. If ordered to kill civilians, Canadian soldiers have the duty to refuse and arrest the Officer giving the order. I imagine it's similar in the US. These rules came directly from German soldiers in WW2 "just following orders".

Re: The Dresden bombing. I'm not familiar with that event (in terms of the strategy behind doing it) so I won't speak about it particularly. I will say that the majority of Allied bombing in Germany was aimed at industrial targets producing war materials, so there's a strong justification for those missions, and for the argument that they saved lives by reducing the German ability to fight.

In general, large scale bombing of civilian targets serves no military purpose. Bombing Berlin, in particular, caused Hitler to switch the focus of his bombing campaign from the RAF to London. Had he not, there's a reasonably good chance the RAF would have been destroyed, opening up Britain for invasion.

People do believe this though. If your mother was Jewish, you can become a citizen of Israel automatically because of your "Jewish Faith"

There are also people who believe that Muslims are inherintly terrorists, and that they cannot help it, they were born that way, because no rational human being can do the things they do. (for wn, no i dont believe this). But because some people do, it will have an effect on the election.

I am actually interested to see if Jews flipflop and vote for McCain - they overwhelmly supported Hillary in the Primaries. The rumors of Palin being part of a church that supports Jews for Jesus will probably help Obama on this front, but I am still curious if there is a Bradley Effect among Jews on election day that publicly support Obama, but can't flick the switch for a Muslim on election day.

Would you say this was true of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

I actually know nothing about this, and if it's like this in the US too, good. I guess it probably is, as A Few Good Men was about this kind of thing.

i am no expert on these things at all, but if Zurvan is correct, then i agree that it served a greater good

I would say that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki was an awful thing, and I'm glad I didn't have to make that decision, or drop the bombs.

OTOH, it did two very important things
1. Forced Japan to surrender. Without the bombs, would they have surrendered short of invasion and utter defeat? If not, then they saved between 1 and 2 million lives
2. Showed exactly what effect nukes have on people. If this had any long term affect on the decision makers in the Cold War, and made them hold off launching on the (way too many) occasions they almost did... then they saved many more lives.

If either of my above two hypotheses are correct (and I suspect they both are, to some degree) then they were worthwhile, and served a purpose.

I know that is the common wisdom but I think this is terrible logic, that nuking cities saves lives.

Would you blow up a car full of nuns to save a bus full of soldiers? Would you execute a 5 year-old girl to save a car full of nuns? You'd be saving lives.

I think you're using a little terrible logic yourself, because you've gone from the specific (nuking Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives) to the general (nuking cities saves lives).

From a moral point of view, I think one could argue that the US should have stopped fighting Japan once it recovered it's territories and protectorates in the Pacific, and let Japan keep the rest. Because at that point they were fighting to prevent potential future losses.

If you accept that defeating the Japanese is a worthy goal, then doing so with the least loss of life possible is imperative.

If you want to argue that the US should not have continued fighting the Japanese, then I think it's obvious they should not have used the Nukes.

You didn't answer the questions.

Way to use extremes amp

If someone killed your children, your wife, your parents, and every relativeyou had, as well as your friends, mother theresa, and all of the most charitable people in the world, would you be justified in killing them, or is there life still valuable enough to be spared?

I thought they were purposely ridiculous. I didn't realize you actually expected me to answer.

The answer is no, obv. I don't believe that there are absolutes here, and it kind of shocks me that you would take the position that if it's ever ok to kill to save lives it's always ok to kill to save lives.

How about people that can't use there and their correctly??????



(What's a political discussion on the Internet without nitty grammar corrections?)

i teach SAT grammar too